His trouble grew as he waited.  He searched his mind for anything calculated to aid the doomed traveller.  He could find nothing.  He thought to call out, to burst his lungs in a series of shouts on the chance of being heard in the chaos of the storm.  But he realised the uselessness of it all, and abandoned the impulse.  No puny human voice could hope to make impression on the din of the elemental battle being fought out on the plain.  No.  His only service must be to stand there beating life into his numbing hands, ready to act on the instant should opportunity serve.

He was eaten up by anxiety, and so took no cognisance of time.  He had forgotten the passing of daylight.  Therefore sudden realisation flung him into headlong panic.  The forest about him was growing dark.  The snow fog outside had changed to a deeper hue.  Night was coming on.  The man in the storm was beyond all aid, human or otherwise.

The impulse of the moment was irresistible.  He moved.  He passed out from behind the long limbs of his leafless shelter.  He went at a run shouting with all the power of his lungs.  Again and again his prolonged cry went up.  And with each effort he waited listening, listening, only to receive the mocking reply of the howling storm.  But he persisted.  He persisted for the simple human reason that his desire outran his power to serve.  And in the end exhaustion forced him to abandon his hopeless task.

It was then the miracle happened.  Far away, it seemed, a sound like the faintest echo of his own voice came back to him, but it came from a direction all utterly unexpected.  For a moment he hesitated, bewildered, uncertain.  Then he sent up another shout, and waited listening.  Yes.  There it was.  Again came the faintly echoing cry through the trees.  It came not from the open battle ground of the storm, but from the shelter of the forests somewhere away to the north of him.

* * * * *

A tall, fur-clad figure stood nearby to the sled which was already partly unloaded.  A yard or two away a fire had been kindled, and it blazed comfortingly in the growing dusk of the forest.  It was the moment when the forest man came up somewhat breathlessly and flung out a mitted hand in greeting.

“I guessed you were makin’ your last run for shelter, Father,” he cried.  “I just hadn’t a hope you’d make through that storm.  You beat it—­fine.”

The tall man nodded.  His dark eyes were smiling a cordiality no less than the other’s.

“I guessed that way, too,” he said quietly.  “Then I didn’t.”  He shrugged his fur-clad shoulders.  “No.  It’s not a northern trail that’s going to see the end of me.  But it’s your yarn I need to hear.  How is it?”

“Bad.”

The two men looked squarely into each others eyes, and the gravity of the forest man was intense.  The man who had just come out of the storm was no less serious, but presently he turned away, and for a second his gaze rested on the group of sprawling dogs.  The beasts looked utterly spent as they blinked at the fire which they were never permitted to approach.  He indicated the fire.